Anne Pettifor has been a member of the Institute of Actuaries since 1988, qualifying as a Fellow in 1999. All her career has been spent working in the pensions field working for consulting actuaries Buck Consultants until 1998, followed by William M Mercer Fraser until the end of 2000. The work involved included all aspects of managing company pension schemes from calculating individual benefits to regular scheme valuations and merger and acquisition work. She was also involved in all other aspects of managing employee benefits and attending Trustee meetings.

From 2001 she has worked as an independent consulting pensions actuary specialising in providing pensions review technical calculation services and services to solicitors. In January 2002 she became Regional Actuary for the North West region for Hazell Carr Collins, which in October 2003 became known as Collins Actuaries, specialising in providing actuarial expertise to solicitors. This expertise covers the fields of pensions and divorce, valuing loss of pension rights in employment cases and valuing life and reversionary interests.

She has also been, since 2000, a volunteer Adviser for The Pensions Advisory Service, assisting members of the public with their varying pension problems and enjoys being able to explain complex pension issues in terms the layman can understand.